128 



NANTUCKET NAPIEK. 



rally well lakl out and neatly paved. Nantes con- 

 tains, besides the various judicial and executive 

 offices, a commercial chamber, a commercial tribu- 

 nal, a lyceum, a medical and anatomical school, a 

 navigation school, a public library (30,000 volumes), 

 a picture gallery, and other scientific and literary 

 establishments. The manufactures are extensive 

 and increasing ; cloths, cotton goods, cutlery, printed 

 linens, hats, leather, cordage, iron, cables, earthen- 

 ware, glass, spirituous liquors, are among the princi- 

 pal articles produced. Ship-building is carried on to 

 a considerable extent. The sugar refineries are nume- 

 rous. Its commerce with Africa, the American and 

 Indian colonies, and all parts of Europe, is active and 

 important. Its inhabitants are also engaged in the 

 cod and other fisheries. Ships of above ninety 

 tons unload at Paimboeuf, a village twenty miles 

 below Nantes. In 1824, 2963 vessels entered the 

 port, of which 352 were engaged in the fisheries, 

 and 2392 in the coasting trade. Henry IV. here 

 issued the edict called from this city, granting the 

 Protestants the free exercise of their religion, in 

 1598. (See Huguenots.) Louis XIV. revoked it in 

 1685. Nantes suffered much during the revolution, 

 by the war of the Vendee, carried on under its 

 gates, by the atrocities (Noyades and republican 

 marriages) of the infamous Carrier (q. v.), and by 

 the interruption of its commerce. Before the con- 

 quest of Gaul by the Romans, it was the capital of 

 the Namneti or Nanneti. It was afterwards, with 

 Rennes, the residence of the dukes of Brittany, and 

 was annexed to France by the marriage of Louis 

 XII. with Anne of Brittany. 



NANTUCKET; an island of Massachusetts, south 

 of the peninsula of cape Cod, from which it is dis- 

 tant about twenty miles. It is about 120 miles 

 south-south-east of Boston. The island is fifteen 

 miles long, and its widest part is eleven miles ; lat. 

 41 13' to 41 22' N.; Ion. 69 56' to 70 13' W. 

 The town of Sherburne formerly comprehended the 

 whole is!and ; but this name is now out of use. The 

 island, town, and county of Nantucket have the 

 same limits ; but the county of Dukes is associated 

 with it for several political purposes. A great part of 

 the inhabitants are of the denomination of Friends, 

 or Quakers. The land is mostly held in common. 

 Little attention is paid to agriculture ; and the sheep 

 and cows of all the inhabitants feed in one great 

 pasture. The right of the island was originally 

 granted by William, earl of Sterling, to Thomas 

 Mayhew, and conveyed by him to nine proprietors, 

 who divided it into twenty-seven shares, in 1659. 

 It is mostly a joint property to this day, although 

 the number of shares has increased to more than 

 3000. The inhabitants are mostly concerned in the 

 whale fishery, and the seamen are the most skilful 

 and adventurous in the world. Their trade suffered 

 greatly by the late war, and by the war of the 

 revolution. It has since been more flourishing, and 

 the spermaceti works are very extensive. The port 

 of Nantucket is on the north-west side of the island, 

 and has a very good harbour. Nantucket contains 

 two banks, two insurance offices, and seven houses 

 of public worship. The population, in 1820, was 

 7266; in 1830, 7202. The amount of shipping, in 

 1820, was 28,512 tons. Education is well attended 

 to, and the habits of the people are generally indus- 

 trious and moral. For many years, Nantucket has 

 been destitute of indigenous trees, and few are culti- 

 vated. 



NANTUCKET SHOAL; a dangerous sandy 

 shoal, south-east of Nantucket island, about forty or 

 fifty miles long. Its breadth is various, and the shoal 

 seems to be longer and broader in some years than 

 in others. Many vessels are wrecked on it. 



(Greek <r, a grove); the nymphs of 

 woods. See Nymphs. 



NAPHTHA. See Bitumen. 



NAPIER, JOHN, of Merchiston, near Edinburgh, 

 the distinguished inventor of the logarithms, was 

 born in the year 1550. He was descended from an 

 ancient race of land proprietors in Stirlingshire and 

 Dumbartonshire. His father, Sir Alexander Napier 

 of Edinbellie, in the former county, and Merchiston, 

 in the county of Edinburgh, was master of the mini 

 to James VI., and was only sixteen years of age 

 when the subject of this memoir was born. The 

 mother of the inventor of the logarithms was Janet, 

 only daughter of Sir Francis Bothwell, a lord of ses 

 sion, and sister of Adam, bishop of Orkney. There 

 is a prevalent notion that the inventor of the logar- 

 ithms was a nobleman: this has arisen from his 

 styling himself, in one of his titlepages, Baro Mer- 

 chistonii ; in reality, this implied baron in the sense 

 of a superior of a barony, or what in England would 

 be called lord of a manor. Napier was simply laird 

 of Merchiston a class who in Scotland sat in parlia- 

 ment under the denomination of the lesser barons. 



Napier was educated at St Salvators college, in 

 the university of St Andrews, which he entered in 

 1562. He afterwards travelled on the continent, 

 probably to improve himself by intercourse with 

 learned and scientific men. Nothing farther is 

 ascertained respecting him, till after he had reached 

 the fortieth year of his age. He is then found set- 

 tled at the family seats of Merchiston, near Edin- 

 burgh, and Gartness, in Stirlingshire, where he seems 

 to have practised the life, of a recluse student, without 

 the least desire to mingle actively in political affairs. 

 That his mind was alive, however, to the civil and 

 religious interests of his country, is proved by his 

 publishing, in 1593, an exposition of the Revelations, 

 in the dedication of which to the king, he urged his 

 majesty, in very plain language, to attend better than 

 he did to the enforcement of the laws, and the pro- 

 tection of religion, beginning reformation in his own 

 " house, family, and court." From this it appears 

 that Napier belonged to the strict order of presby- 

 terians in Scotland ; for such are exactly the senti- 

 ments chiefly found prevalent among that class of 

 men at this period of Scottish history. 



In 1596, he is found suggesting the use of salt in 

 improving land ; an idea probably passed over in his 

 own time as chimerical, but revived in the present 

 age with good effect. No more is heard of him till, 

 in 1614, he astonished the world by the publication 

 of his book of logarithms. He is understood to have 

 devoted the intermediate time to the study of astro- 

 nomy, a science then reviving to a new life, under 

 the auspices of Kepler and Galileo, the former of 

 whom dedicated his Ephemerides to Napier, consid- 

 ering him as the greatest man of his age in the par- 

 ticular department to which he applied his abilities. 

 The invention was very soon known over all Europe, 

 and was everywhere hailed with admiration by men 

 of science. Napier followed it up, in 1617, by pub- 

 lishing a small treatise, giving an account of a method 

 of performing the operations of multiplication and 

 division, by means of a number of small rods. These 

 materials for calculation have maintained their 

 place in science, and are known by the appellation 

 of Napier's Bones. 



In 1608, Napier succeeded his father, when he had 

 a contest with his brothers and sisters, on account of 

 some settlements made to his prejudice by his father, 

 in breach of a promise made in 1586, in presence of 

 some friends of the family, not to sell, wadset, or 

 dispose, from his son John, the lands of Over Merrhis- 

 ton, or any part thereof. The family disputes were 

 probably accommodated before June 9, 1613, on 



